When liberals and their media allies have an agenda to push,
they’ll use any tool at hand. The left often rails against the presence of
religion in civic life, mocking conservative Christians as “Taliban” agitating
for theocracy. But other times, they find faith to be a handy weapon to
bludgeon conservatives. And they’ll go so far as to reinterpret and rewrite the
Bible to justify any liberal cause, no matter how outrageous.

In 2010, MSNBC anchor Melissa Harris-Perry summed up this
strategy in her call for “re-imagining the Bible as a tool of progressive
social change.” Huffington Post contributor Mike Lux embraced Harris-Perry’s
advice, writing that the Bible embodies “all kinds” of “liberal, lefty,
progressive values.”

The Media
Research Center’s
Culture and Media Institute analyzed the various ways liberals and the media
have used and abused the Bible to mock religion, attack conservatives and
justify left-wing policy.

Harris-Perry’s “re-imagining” of the Bible has become a
favorite liberal tactic, as journalists and politicians have cited it to promote
socialism, gay marriage, abortion and a host of other progressive policies.
Washington Post “On Faith” contributor Anthony Stevens-Arroyo argued that the
Bible was the inspiration for Karl Marx’s dictum “From each according to his
abilities, to each according to his needs.” Huffington Post contributor
Kittredge Cherry claimed Jesus Christ was a homosexual: “Christ lives in every
individual of every different shade of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Writer Nynia Chance proclaimed that the Bible supported
abortion on RH Reality Check: “there’s times where the Bible states God
commands that one [abortion] take place.”

Academics and journalists have even actively changed the
words and content of the Bible to further their ideology. Anonymous editors
created a “Queen James Bible” that “resolves any homophobic interpretations of
the Bible.” The media hyped a small papyrus fragment indiscreetly titled the
“Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” which claimed Jesus had married and hid evidence that
the fragment was a hoax. On “Good Morning America,” ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas even
touted the fragment as a “real-life Da Vinci Code.”

The entertainment industry also
delights in skewering the Christian holy book in order to mock it. The now-canceled
show “GCB” carved its own set of 10 Commandments, inverting one Commandment to
read: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s husband… Unless he’s really
hot.” Rapper Lil’ Kim’s “10 Commandments” invented
new commandments for women “to keep your man whipped.” The twisted cable series
“True Blood” created its own Vampire bible with the phrase: “As their
flesh shall nourish yours, their blood shall flow within you, for as the beetle
nourishes the lark so shall human nourish vampire.”

Writers, politicians and
entertainers have made concerted effort to alter the content and message of the
Bible, substituting the gospel of liberalism for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Thou Shalt Adopt Radical Economics

The Bible of liberalism condemns conservatives as uncaring,
unfeeling oppressors of the poor, and exalts progressives as liberators of the
downtrodden.

Democratic politicians have repeatedly used the Bible to condemn
conservative economic principles and policies. President Barack Obama has been
the most prominent practitioner of this tactic; he invoked the Biblical passage
“I am my brother’s keeper” to justify government policies requiring redistribution
of wealth in a March 30, 2012, campaign speech. Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky quoted
1 John 3:17-18 to condemn the GOP budget, saying, “But
if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his
heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in
deed and in truth.” She then asked her Republican opponents, “Why does
your budget resolution take away food from the poor?”

Progressive writers have joined Democratic politicians in
citing the Bible to attack straw man arguments supposedly constituting conservative
economics. Huffington Post contributor Mike Lux, in a Feb. 21, 2012, article
titled “What Bible is Santorum Reading?” wrote that “Modern conservatives are
far more faithful to Ayn Rand, who openly rejected Christianity because of its
values of helping the poor and caring for others.”

Lux said the Bible is clearly a progressive tome: “there is
simply no way to read the Bible I read and not come to the conclusion that it
is overwhelmingly supportive of helping the poor, showing mercy to the weak,
refraining from judging, treating others as you would treat yourself, calling
on the wealthy to give their money to the poor, and all kinds of other liberal, lefty, progressive values.”

But the Bible is not a policy paper. It is mostly silent on
the role of government, and those who see it as a blueprint for a state that
addresses every inequality and sin are lacking in moral imagination. Jesus’ admonition
to “give unto Caesar” doesn’t set marginal tax rates, but “give unto God” does
suggest that there is a range of human activity and morality properly outside
the state.

Conservatives acknowledge a duty to help the poor, but they
disagree that compulsory taxation for the welfare state is the best or only
mechanism to fulfill it. A 2006 study by American Enterprise Institute
President Arthur Brooks, then a Syracuse
University professor, found
that conservatives give more of their personal income to charity than liberals.

Even the parables of Jesus have been twisted into liberal agitprop
by progressives. In a Dec. 6, 2011, article, Washington Post “On Faith”
contributor Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite implausibly mangled Jesus’ parable of the
talents into a class warfare lesson. The parable of the talents (Luke 19:12-27)
concerns a nobleman who entrusted his money to his servants to invest while he went
on a long journey. Two servants obeyed their master and increased his wealth,
while the third hid the money. When the master returned, he rewarded the two
hardworking servants and punished the third for his laziness.

Thistlethwaite turned the message of the parable on its head:
“When the nobleman chastises the third servant, it is the nobleman and not the
servant who is in violation of the laws of the Hebrew Bible,” because “The
third servant is the one who refuses to participate in the game of increasing
his lord’s financial wealth at the costs of the poor.”

Dr. Michael Youssef, founder of the Christian outreach
ministry Leading the Way, challenged Thistlethwaite’s interpretation in an
interview with CMI: “This interpretation contradicts the clear teaching of 2
Thessalonians 3:10: ‘he who does not work should not eat.’ The master condemns
the lazy servant for his inaction, and praised the faithful servants for their
investment of his money. God rewards man for his intelligence and his efforts
throughout the Bible.”

But Thistlethwaite’s misinterpretation dovetailed nicely
with the media’s progressive attitude towards the Bible, which MSNBC anchor
Melissa Harris-Perry succinctly expressed in a February 2010, blog post for The
Nation magazine as “re-imagining the Bible as a tool of progressive
social change.” Politically-motivated liberals “re-imagine” a Bible that
justifies radical economic policies, such as the Occupy movement and
redistribution of wealth.

By contrast, a Christian vision of the Bible emphasizes God
and His message of salvation, as Dr. Youssef explained to CMI: “The Bible
should be read primarily as God’s self-revelation, as His breath. If people
read it as a justification for their own desires and own political positions,
they are absolutely committing unpardonable sin.”

But a spiritual understanding of the Bible contradicts the
political gospel of the religious left. Rev. Jesse Jackson and Thistlethwaite
claimed that “Jesus was an Occupier,” implausibly citing Jesus’ expulsion of the
moneychangers from the Temple
as proof that Jesus would support violent mass occupations of public places.
“On Faith” contributor Lisa Miller concurred with Jackson and Thistlethwaite, asserting
that the “Jesus of history” would embrace the Occupy movement.

In December 2011, another “On Faith” contributor, Anthony
Stevens-Arroyo, praised liberation theology (which emphasizes
empowerment of the downtrodden at the expense of the powerful), and attempted
to link the Bible to Marxism: “But the ideal ‘from each according to his
ability; to each according to his need,’ doesn’t originate with Marx. It comes
from the Acts of the Apostles (4:34-35; 1:44-45).”

Again, Christian conservatives do not ignore the Biblical
mandate to serve the poor. Christ commanded that his followers practice
voluntary charity; he even exhorted a rich young man to “go your way, sell
whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in
heaven.” (Mark 10:21) But the Bible is not a critique of capitalism or a call
for economic equality, no matter how hard the left tries to make it so.

Thou Shalt Support Social Liberalism

In the liberal worldview, the Bible justifies more than enforced
economic equality; it mandates the adoption of progressive social values. Homosexual
activists argue that the Bible supports gay marriage, and claim that Jesus
Christ had homosexual inclinations. Other writers hold that the Bible actively
promotes abortion.

Some of these arguments for Biblically sanctioned social
progressivism rely on heavy use of incoherent academic jargon. Wil Gafney, professor
at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia,
argued in a Sept. 16, 2012, Huffington Post article: “RuPaul, the reigning
Queen of Queens, is famous for saying that ‘wearing drag in a male dominated
society is an act of treason.’ Ru knows that choosing any kind of female gender
performance by intentionally surrendering and/or sabotaging male privilege is
an act of treason – or resistance – against the androcentrism is this planet’s
original sin, pervading the scriptures and on display in the Gospel, on the lips
of Jesus, no less.”

Gafney’s display of convoluted theology was unsurprising,
considering the fact that she cited drag queens as her “favorite” theologians:
“Drag queens like RuPaul, Sharon Needles and Latrice Royale are some of my
favorite critical gender theorists and theologians.”

Other progressive writers posited similar bizarre claims
about the Bible’s treatment of sexuality. Kittredge Cherry concocted an April
3, 2012, Huffington Post article “Queer Christ Arises to Liberate and Heal,” in
which she claimed: “Christ lives in every individual of every different shade
of sexual orientation and gender identity.” (The Huffington Post has also featured
an image of Jesus on the cross with the word “faggot” replacing “INRI” (“King
of the Jews” in Latin), so it’s a favorite theme there.)

In an April 23, 2012, article posted on the far-left site Alternet,
Paul Osterreicher echoed Cherry’s assertion: “Heterosexual, bisexual,
homosexual: Jesus could have been any of these. The homosexual option simply
seems the most likely.”

Other activists read homosexual themes into artistic
renderings of Biblical stories. Christopher Harrity, writing for the LGBT site
Advocate.com, called artistic depictions of Biblical scenes “gay Bible porn”
and claimed that there were “so many visual representations of Christ that are
exquisitely sensual and detailed in a corporeal, sexual way.”

Other writers asserted that a “correctly” interpreted Bible favors
homosexual activity – or at very least has nothing to say on the topic. Daniel
Helminiak wrote on CNN’s Belief Blog on May 15, 2012, that “Nowhere does the
Bible actually oppose homosexuality.” Huffington Post contributor Matthew Vines
declared on March 26, 2012: “The Bible does not condemn loving gay
relationships. It is not opposed to justice and equality for gay people, and in
fact it supports their equal right to marry. Scripture can prove to be one of
our greatest allies, if only we're reading it correctly.”

The conflation of love with erotic attraction is the root of
this false assumption. Biblical expressions of love between two men or women
are automatically and falsely equated with sexual relationships by homosexual
activists.

It is certainly true that the Bible commands Christians to
love “gay” and “straight” people alike. As St.
Paul writes: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians
3:28) All men and women are children of God, and must therefore be treated with
respect and dignity by Christians.

But it is not “love” to practice or condone a lifestyle
specifically forbidden by the Bible. Love is not affirmation of a harmful
lifestyle; loving Christians do not condone their friends’ destructive behavior.

Both the Old and New Testaments do condemn homosexual
behavior on numerous occasions, despite the logical contortions of those that
argue otherwise. Homosexual activists like anti-bullying bully and gay sex
columnist Dan Savage, who rails against “bullshit in the Bible about gay people”
display more intellectual honesty than their counterparts about the Bible’s
negative stance on homosexuality (although Savage falsely equates disapproval
of homosexual activity with hatred of gay people).

Celebrating homosexual acts is not the only concern of the
gospel of social liberalism; progressive writers also have used the Bible to
justify abortion.

Erin Gloria Ryan of the liberal site Jezebel likes abortion
so much she recently wrote an article advising women of the ideal age to have
one (her answer: 25). So it isn’t surprising that she enlisted the Bible to
(tacitly) support her enthusiasm. In November 2012, Ryan wrote, “there are a
lot more passages in the Bible that imply (or insist) that the big man upstairs
doesn't consider a zygote to be the same sort of being with the same value as,
say, a mailman or a trapeze artist than there are passages that mention
abortion.” And because “there are zero Bible passages that mention abortion, as
in ‘don't do it,’” the Bible must be pro-abortion.

Nynia Chance, a self-proclaimed “devout reader of the
Bible,” argued in a June 3, 2012, post on pro-abortion site RH Reality Check
that the Bible was actually a pro-abortion tract, declaring: “The Bible never
once specifically forbids abortions; it’s actually quite the opposite! Not only
were methods of abortion well-known at the time, there’s times when the Bible
states God commands that one take place.”

Chance’s first “example,” taken from the Biblical narrative
of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38), illustrates the failure of her argument. The
story of Judah and Tamar is a graphic tale of the failure of a Biblical
patriarch to live a moral life. Tamar, the widow of Judah’s
oldest son Er, was given to Judah’s
second son Onan in marriage, but Onan was killed by God for his sin. Judah
indefinitely postponed the marriage of Tamar to his third son, Shelah. So Tamar
dressed as a prostitute, and Judah
saw her and asked to sleep with her (not knowing who she was), even giving her identifying
marks as a pledge. When Judah
found Tamar was pregnant, he sought to have her burned – until she showed him
his identifying marks, proving that he was the father of her children.

After recounting this story, Chance implausibly argued: “So
in this story, I see the Bible saying that killing an unborn child is necessary
when it’s not a child conceived in a way the mother’s society wants. Also, that
a mother should die along with it, because of engaging in an act the sentencer
had done.” Chance’s Biblical interpretation assumes that 1) pre-Mosaic law (the
event took place in Genesis, before the establishment of the Law of Moses) was sanctioned
by God, 2) that the Bible recounted Judah’s immoral behavior, and 3) that the
Bible condones abortions because it related the story of a hypocritical man who
threatened to kill a pregnant woman. All of these assumptions are nonsensical; Chance
ignored the inconvenient facts that Tamar shamed Judah
by exposing his complicity in her pregnancy and that the “abortion” Judah sought
never happened.

Conservative commentator Cal
Thomas strongly rebuked ideologues who twist the Bible to advance liberal
social causes: “People are free to accept or reject what Scripture says.
What they are not free to do is to claim it says something it does not. In
modern times that’s called ‘spin.’ In an earlier time it was called heresy.”

Call it spin, heresy, or lunacy – the practice of twisting
Scripture to justify social progressivism is rampant among the religious left.

The Gospel According to Hollywood

The Bible continues to be a rich source of inspiration and
material for the entertainment industry. It’s just that now – as often as not –
writers twist it, mock it and use it to further the ideological goals of the
left and the irreligious.

The music industry has singled the Bible out for special
mockery. Rapper Lil’ Kim created her own set of 10 commandments for girls “to
keep your man whipped,” advising women to “never move in unless he tell you.”
Rapper Pusha T appropriated Biblical themes, releasing an expletive-laden song titled
“Exodus 23:1” in 2012 that took aim at a fellow rapper.

In her music video “Judas,” pop artist Lady Gaga used Biblical
imagery to celebrate the betrayer of Jesus. The lyrics of “Judas” include these
lines:

When he calls to me, I am ready
I’ll wash his feet with my hair if he needs
Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain
Even after three times, he betrays me

Her song inverted two Biblical incidents: Peter’s betrayal
of Jesus (Mark 14:66-72) and a woman pouring ointment over Jesus’ feet and washing
His feet with her hair. (Luke 7:36-50) Lady Gaga substituted Jesus’ betrayer
for Jesus as an object of veneration.

But intentional Biblical confusion in the entertainment
industry is not confined to the music world. Dan Brown, author of the
best-selling novel “The Da Vinci Code,” cherry-picked segments of the Bible to help
construct a tale about the Catholic Church covering up a sexual relationship
between Jesus and Mary Magdalene for centuries. It served the twin purposes of
making the Church a villain and suggesting that the true, modern feminist
messages of the Bible were expunged in the interest of a male power structure.
Brown then claimed in an interview on CNN that “99 percent of it is true.”

Ignoring Brown’s numerous Biblical distortions,
Thistlethwaite actually celebrated “The Da Vinci Code” as instrumental in
rehabilitating the reputation of Mary Magdalene, writing that the “fictional
account by Dan Brown does add some non-Biblical innovations, as readers and
film-goers know, but the counter-narrative on Mary Magdalene has been
effective.” (Thistlethwaite ignored the fact that Catholics have venerated Mary
Magdalene as a saint for centuries.)

Television shows and films also carelessly mangle the Bible.
During the musical “Glee,” one of the characters of the show’s self-proclaimed “God
Squad” speculated that one of Jesus’ apostles was gay: “They say one out of
every 10 people are gay. And if that's true, that means one of the 12 apostles
might have been gay. My guess is Simon, because that name's the gayest.”

HBO’s gory, overtly anti-conservative vampire series, “True
Blood,” created its own Vampire Bible that supposedly predated the Christian
Bible. This Vampire Bible declared that a vampire called Lilith was made in the
image of God, and specifically stated that human beings were created to nourish
vampires: “As their flesh shall nourish yours, their blood shall flow within
you, for as the beetle nourishes the lark so shall human nourish vampire.” The
show features an unsavory group of vampires who interpret their Bible
literally, mocks Christian sacraments and Catholic institutions, and includes a
“deranged theocrat” that producer Allan Ball said was inspired by former
Pennsylvania Senator and GOP presidential primary candidate Rick Santorum.

The now-canceled show “GCB,” formerly titled “Good Christian
Bitches,” existed to portray Christians as materialistic hypocrites who lie,
cheat, betray friendships and confidences – essentially, they live like their Hollywood creators. A sampling of “GCB’s” mocking version
of the 10 Commandments includes: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s husband…
Unless he’s really hot.” “Thou shalt love a “C” cup, unless you fit into a “D”
cup.” “Thou shalt know it’s wrong to expose your thong.” “Thou shalt add bling
to everything.” “Thou shall not wear it if it’s under a carat.” and “Thou shalt
match the volume of thy hair to the size of thy handbag.”

Thou Shalt Remake the Bible in Thine Own Image

Liberals see the U.S. Constitution is a “living document,” they
can “change with the times.” The Bible, it seems, is no safer from their whims.

Daily Beast and Post contributor Lisa Miller, a religious
liberal, specifically called it “a living document,” by which she meant that
the Bible and its teachings (especially the unpleasant ones) are changeable.
CNN’s Piers Morgan expressed this attitude when he rhetorically asked Jeff
Foxworthy on his Aug. 22, 2012, show: “How literally should people take the
Bible? And should the Bible be an evolutionary thing, rather like the
Constitution was amended a few times?”

Ideological leftists are attracted to the idea of a mutable
Bible. And some even go ahead and rewrite it according to their desires and
politics. A group of anonymous editors created the “Queen James Bible” to
challenge traditional Scripture’s teaching on homosexuality. Their stated
purpose was quite clear: “The Queen
James Bible resolves any homophobic interpretations of the Bible.” The authors
boasted in their editor’s note:
“We wanted to make a book filled with the word of God that nobody could use to
incorrectly condemn God’s LGBT children, and we succeeded.”

The quality of their scholarship leaves something to be
desired. The editors of the “Queen James Bible” made only eight edits to the
Bible (predictably, eight verses dealing with homosexuality) and expressly
stated that they “didn’t change
anything else to create this edition of the Queen James Bible.” The
editors also asserted in their editor’s note: “Yes, things like Leviticus are
horribly outdated,” and claimed that “the
Bible is still filled with inequality and even contradiction that we have not
addressed. This leaves the question of why they bothered “editing” a work which
they have little respect for in the first place; after all, they claim that “No
Bible is perfect, including this one.”

The most extensive media attempt to promote a mutable Bible involved
a fragment of papyrus rashly dubbed the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” The fragment, “about
the size of a small cell phone,” referenced Jesus using the words “my wife.” In
September 2012, print and television media wildly speculated about the
fragment’s potential impact on Christianity.

On Sept. 19, ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas breathlessly touted the
fragment: “Real-life ‘Da Vinci Code.’ Christianity’s biggest mysteries about to
be solved. The tiny scrap of paper that could prove Jesus had a wife. Why this
faded fragment might solve an age old question.” Her colleague Diane Sawyer
cooed that it was an “ancient clue … right out of the ‘Da Vinci Code.’” All
three broadcast networks hyped the fragment relentlessly on both their morning
and evening news programs.

What they didn’t say was that many academics were skeptical
of the authenticity of the fragment and that it was first translated and
popularized by a self-proclaimed expert in “feminist theology” with an interest
in promoting extra-Biblical texts. When sources like The Washington Post, The
New York Times and even NBC News online reported that the Vatican and a
Coptic scholar declared the fragment “fake,” no broadcast network covered it. The
same fragment of papyrus that was hyped with such excitement when it may have
subverted traditional readings of the New Testament disappeared entirely from
the networks when it didn’t turn out like they’d hoped.

The “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” wasn’t the only instance of journalists
placing questionable texts on par with the Bible. Thistlethwaite promoted one
of the Gnostic gospels – writings about Jesus rejected by the early Church, which
include stories of Jesus killing people. She touted the Gnostic Gospel of Mary
as a “long lost Gospel” in a March 5, 2012, rant against Rush Limbaugh,
grandiosely titled: “Mary Magdalene to Rush Limbaugh: Your apology is too
little, too late.”

Journalists are also notorious for citing academics seeking
to stretch the boundaries of the Bible. On March 31, 2012, CNN Belief Blogger John
Blake quoted Princeton professor and expert in Gnosticism Elaine Pagels, saying
“The author of Revelation hated Rome,
but he also scorned another group – a group of people we would call Christians
today.” Dwight Garner of The New York Times
praised Pagels’ efforts to mangle the book of Revelation, gushing that her work
“drifts above the issues like an intellectual
satellite.”

University
of North Carolina
professor Bart Ehrman, a self-professed non-Church going agnostic, claimed on
the Huffington Post in March 2011: “Many of the books of the New Testament were
written by people who lied about their identity, claiming to be a famous
apostle – Peter, Paul or James – knowing full well they were someone else. In
modern parlance, that is a lie, and a book written by someone who lies about
his identity is a forgery.” Other scholars dispute
Ehrman’s claims; one noted that his work “comes across as more
autobiographical than academic; more polemical than historical.”

Ehrman has not been shy about slamming
the historical accuracy of the Bible. In the Dec. 17, 2012, print edition of Newsweek,
Ehrman took aim at the Bible’s accuracy, claiming that “the accounts of Jesus’
life in the New Testament have never been called histories”; instead, they have
always been known as “Gospels” – that is, “proclamations of the good news.”
These are books that meant to declare religious truths, not historical facts.”
As Baptist scholar Alfred Mohler, Jr. noted in a takedown of Ehrman’s piece: “So, in the waning days of Newsweek as
a print magazine, the editors decided to take on the New Testament. Readers
should note carefully that it is Newsweek, and not the New Testament, that is
going out of print.”

Conclusion

Modern liberals regularly dismiss the Bible as repressive
and irrelevant to modernity, and excoriate Christian conservatives for
believing, in Dan Savage’s words, “bullshit in the Bible.” But the left is
nothing if not opportunistic. Just as liberals become federalists when it’s
constitutionally convenient, they become Bible scholars when they believe it
can be used as a “tool of progressive social change.”

“They don’t believe the
Bible in the same way Christians do,” Youssef
explained to CMI. “They don’t read the Bible sacredly. They read it as
something you can use, something you can abuse. So they quote it out of
context.”

That utilitarian reading of the
Bible, along with the left’s inability to long disguise its contempt for
traditional Christianity, is why liberal arguments based on scripture are
rarely, if ever, convincing.

Recommendations:

Treat the Bible as a Holy Book, Not a Punching
Bag: Journalists should stop treating the Bible as an archaic book of
outdated customs. Entertainers should stop using Christianity’s holy book
as a set-up for sex jokes.

Treat Christianity, Other Religions
the Same: Journalists would never target the Koran, the holy book of
Islam for mockery – and would immediately be censored if they did. They
should strive to treat the Bible with the same respect that they treat the
texts of other faiths.

Context, Context, Context:
Journalists should examine the context of each Bible passage before
cherry-picking quotes to support their ideological position.

Stop Citing Bible-bashers:
Journalists should cease citing scholars as authoritative who have a
vested interest in altering or discrediting the Bible – or at least make
clear their leanings.

Federal employees and military personnel can donate to the Media Research Center through the Combined Federal Campaign or CFC. To donate to the MRC, use CFC #12489. Visit the CFC website for more information about giving opportunities in your workplace.